I know it's old news by blog standards but I had to comment on the Dean quote about "hating Republicans". In case you missed it,
here's what your friendly neighborhood rightwing froth source (Newsmax) had to say about it:
The front-runner in the race to head up the so-called party of compassion and understanding said unabashedly on Saturday that he "hates" the opposition.
"I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for," former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told Democrats gathered at a Manhattan hotel, in quotes picked up by the New York Daily News.
Ooooo no! Dean hates Weepubwicans! He's scawy! You'd think Democrats would be immune to this kind of political manipulation, but in fact I've now heard it cited repeatedly as evidence that Dean is too 'unbalanced' to be DNC chair.
Well you know what? I don't think this disqualifies him at all. In fact, I think Howard Dean is completely right to hate the Republicans. Let me show you why.
Simply put, the Republicans hate you.
I don't care who you are, what you believe, which wing of the party you identify with. I don't care if you're in Washington or Tulsa or Chicago or Birmingham. I don't care if your name is Roemer or Pelosi or From or Dean or Frost or Clinton or Daschle or Kucinich or Lieberman. The Republicans hate you.
Here's what David Brock says (Blinded By the Right, p. 60):
Newt [Gingrich] understood that conservatism thrives only when it has an enemy, and in the Cold War's wake, Newt declared war again, this time on the domestic enemy, the Democratic Party and the "corrupt liberal welfare state" it supported. Newt's analogy of American liberalism to world Communism made it possible for us to continue to divide the world into white hats and black hats, to channel our fears in a new direction. No longer would the Democrats simply be opposed; they would be destroyed.
To the Republicans, we are the moral heirs of a war that started long before any of us were born. A war that started in the slums of Europe and continued in the gulags of Russia. To the Republican party, you are immoral, you are corrupt, you are evil. To the Republican party, simply by identifying yourself as a Democrat, you are just the latest incarnation of The Enemy. They'll say their enemy is Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Sadr, Khatami, Sistani, terrorism, drugs, immorality. Bullshit. If you want to see the enemy the Republicans most hate and fear, find a mirror. You are The Enemy, because you and you alone have the power to stop them.
"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." -- Ann Coulter, 2002 Address to the Conservative Political Action Committee.
Ok, so I'm sure that many of you know that or at least suspect it. But many are still upset about Dean's quote, ostensibly because "we can't sink to their level". A level like this:
I spit on them; I hate their guts [referring to "degenerate leftists who have ruined this nation"]-- Michael Savage.
I think that fear is absurd. I'll make it very clear. I don't hate any individual Republican. But if you've hung around religious folk long enough you'll hear the phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin." That's about my sentiment when it comes to Republicans.
I wish more Democrats shared it, because I think that many Democrats misunderstand the magnitude of the battle we're facing today. The party is more than a set of issues. The party is the reflection of an entire American school of thought, a national mindset that values tolerance, responsibility, and, above all, freedom. That is what we're fighting for. And that is what the Republicans hate. It doesn't MATTER where you stand on the Democratic spectrum, simply by being a member of the ONLY organization that can realistically stop them, you have earned the absolute hatred of the Republicans.
Yet Democrats act as if this isn't true. As if it will take just one more compromise, one more edge to the right to appease them. Let me be clear here. The Republicans have turned American politics into a war. We didn't ask for it, we did not seek it out. But we must fight it now, because capitulation will essentially usher in the end of America's era of freedom and political pluralism. This requires some new understandings about our relationship. Simply put, there is no profit in cooperating with an adversary that ultimately wants to destroy you. There is no way to satisfactorily pursue bipartisanship when the goal of one party is the absolute suppression of the other.
Yet the party does not behave in accordance with this simple fact. Instead they act as if it is heresy to hate everything the Republicans stand for. I think it's an absolute travesty NOT to. I hate what the Republicans stand for because I love what AMERICA stands for. Sometimes in order to protect the things you love, you have to be willing to hate the things that would destroy them.
How can you love American freedoms if you don't hate the PATRIOT act? How can you love America's environment if you don't hate Orwellian miscarriages like the "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" Acts. How can you love universal education if you don't hate the misbegotten salvo of class warfare that is No Child Left Behind? How can you love Social Security without hating privatization? There comes a time when we as a party must choose to stand for the things we love about our country. This is the time to protect those things. This is the time to FIGHT for those things. Yet too many Democrats have chosen to take the easiest path, the path of least anger, but also the path of least courage. Too many Democrats have chosen peace at the expense of effectiveness, and have sacrificed the BASIC BELIEFS of liberalism to search for the uncertain promise of interparty peace.
Let me rest your mind: it will not happen. There will not be peace between the parties because, simply, they hate us. They will not stop until we have been destroyed. They will not rest until we have been rooted from the nation. And that's why, if Howard Dean actually said what Newsmax claims he said, I applaud him. I applaud him because to me that indicates that SOMEONE FINALLY GETS IT. Someone finally appreciates that the greatest challenge facing the Democratic Party is not the end of Social Security, the dismantling of environmental protections, the end to a woman's right to choose, or the collapse of labor standards-- while those will all be tragic, they can be fixed in a healthy political climate. The greatest challenge facing the Democratic Party in the next four years will be the difficult and painful work of sustaining America's political freedom in the face of unchallenged one-party rule. They now hold every lever of power and they will stop at nothing to destroy us. Our leader-- whoever he is-- needs to have the determination, the willpower, and the skill to maintain the party as an effective organ of opposition. America's future as a free nation depends on it. And that means being strong enough to hate the attitudes that would destroy you.